]]>By: totohttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/when-eve-met-creb/#comment-40003
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:55:42 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=15557#comment-40003Why exactly do we think that people ~150,000 years ago looked anything like modern East Africans?

Well… if we accept that the pigmentation of modern East Africans is largely determined by selective pressure / stabilizing selection, and that dark pigments are not a recent evolutionary development, then it would make sense that their ancestor of 150Ky ago (or even before that, including archaics), living at the same place, would have roughly the same pigmentation?

]]>By: jbhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/when-eve-met-creb/#comment-40002
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:27:56 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=15557#comment-40002“She’s awfully pale for an East African.” This is true on the merits, but the logic is kind of dumb. Why exactly do we think that people ~150,000 years ago looked anything like modern East Africans?

No worries! I was curious why some of the article’s commenters wanted to kick Ronald Moore in the balls, and this led me to the Wikipedia page for Battlestar Galactica, where I learned that The new Earth is found to be inhabited by early humans, who are genetically compatible with the humans from the Galactica and the rest of the fleet… . Human beings had apparently independently evolved on Earth and Kobol. So you see, even if the Mitochondrial Eve was a pale skinned little girl from another planet, her descendents could still get their East African looks from the locals. Perfectly logical! Problem solved!